Construction cranes still surround the brand-new plant in Kulim’s industrial park in Malaysia. But inside, legions of workers hired by Austrian tech giant AT&S are already gearing up to produce at full capacity by year’s end. Outfitted in head-to-toe coveralls, with oversized safety glasses and hard hats, they’re reminiscent of the worker bees in the movie “Minions,” but colour coded by function: Blue for maintenance, green for vendors, pink for janitors, white for operators.
AT&S is just one of a flood of European and American companies that have recently decided to move to or expand operations in Malaysia’s electrical and electronics manufacturing mecca. US chip giant Intel and German corporation Infineon are each investing US$7 billion (S$9.33 billion). Nvidia, the world’s leading maker of chips powering artificial intelligence, is teaming up with the country’s utilities conglomerate to develop a US$4.3 billion artificial intelligence cloud and supercomputer centre. Texas Instruments, Ericsson, Bosch and Lam Research are all expanding in Malaysi